At this rate of backpeddling, they should have more artifacts than they started with by about lunchtime tomorrow …
Actually the media paid much more attention the museum looting than when the war saved imprisoned children. The US Marines freed 160 youngsters from a children’s prison in Baghdad where Saddam locked up the kids of parents deemed disloyal to the regime.
There are only about a dozen references to the liberation of these children in all of google news, as compared to over four thousand hits on the museum looting. In fact, I didn’t find a single story that was solely about the children’s prison, although it seems newsworthy.
Apparently, for many in the media, the importance of a story depends on how badly it reflects on the war, Bush and the US.
I agree. These posts are certainly not constructive. I am actually surprised to see december cede a single point. Its rare to see one of those admissions of guilt!
The Anti-Americanism thread is a real hoot. That’s a debate where people are going to learn things. I thought the straight dope was about fighting ignorance not trying to force your views down other’s throats. You can’t have an intelligent debate if you believe everything you think is right even if you have a flimsy proof or evidence from somewhere to prove everything you say.
I am anti-war, but if I were to emulate december, I would make a post like:
“Why does Israel control the US foreign policy, and are the Jews trying to control the world?” Then I’d put up a bunch of citations to Justin Raimondo and Pat Buchanan, Noam Chomsky, et al.
But I don’t because I realize that my views aren’t always the right ones and that our collective knowledge is much more powerful than mine can ever be.
When you start out with a thread titled:
“American anti-Americanism: What’s the cause? Will it persist? If not, then what?”
the premise of the discussion is based around a point the author is trying to push, namely that there exists Anti-Americanism and that someone could want to have a masochistic desire for harm to come to their country. Its to hard to realize that the changes they want are considered a good them to themselves while their opponents think they are bad. If they want bad things to happen to America, they must hate America.
Anyway
1 don’t know
2 don’t know
3. It says that they care about 5,000 year-old history and the negligence is the same no matter how many pieces were lost
4. I hope not considering that the cultural value of 170,000 pieces can be the same as 29 peices. Quit trying to pass off beliefs as facts
I will say something good about my pal december. This place would be very boring if it weren’t for his presence. You should work in a newspaper. I heard that the National Enquierer is hiring.
Well, if we are going to open up the whole field of news reporting on the war, why don’t we look into some other things:
(1) How many statues of Hussein were brought down and exactly how many people were involved? To see the news media tell it, the whole country was one big raucous celebration. However, I have heard reports in alternative circles suggesting that that statue of Hussein conveniently pulled down right near the hotel where all the journalists were staying may have involved rather few people loyal to one of these Iranian exiles. I don’t know what the truth is about all this, but it doesn’t seem to be keeping december awake nights.
(2) How many times were we treated to big front page [or top story] headlines about WMDs apparently being found and then, when the retractions came, were they given the same billing?
(3) How many times were we treated to “news” about the war which was essentially sourced directly from the U.S. military command or from reporters embedded with the military?
Yeah, those reporters, they’ve really been going after Bush like pit-bulls…well, okay…maybe like golden retrievers.
I’ve got Assyriologist (= researcher on ancient Mesopotamia) and Islamicist colleagues with colleagues and friends on the staffs of Iraqi museums and libraries. Folks, we are talking huge amounts of destruction (both deliberate and accidental) and looting; nationwide I’d guess it will end up at well over half a million items, if not in the millions. An Oxford cuneiformist colleague is keeping track of reports of cultural heritage loss in Iraq, if you want to follow the news about it.
I find it very amusing in a sort of depressing way that the US military had enough manpower to send soldiers over to the Al Rashid hotel to tear up the floor mosaic of King George I, but claimed that they could not spare a tank and a platoon to save 5,000 years of Iraqi antiquities. I guess it’s just a matter of priorities.
I’m more distressed, though not surprised, that US forces managed to secure all of Iraq’s oil wells and the oil ministry in Baghdad, but couldn’t lift a finger for this museum. Priorities, like I said.
December, that’s great about the saved children, although your rationale for it is loopy. Those liberals on FOX will show anything to make America look bad, won’t they? I think jshore makes several good point in his post.
Um, why was there a floor mosaic of George I? Did British soldiers put it there?
(Or do you mean Dubya?)
I doubt there’d be a floor mosaic of either Bush in Iraq. Don’t ask me why. 
Saddam Hussein had a floor mosaic of George HW Bush (#41) installed in the lobby of the Al Rashid hotel after Gulf War I. In the Arab world, the biggest insult you can give someone is to show them the bottom of your shoes, which are theoretically filthy. Thus, this was a tremendous insult to GHWB because everyone using the lobby would be walking over the mosaic of the former president. This information has been shown on the news repeatedly over the past decade or so. I hope I don’t need to provide you with a specific link.
I said I wouldn’t post a link, but here you go.
http://www.adn.com/24hour/weird/story/849857p-5960192c.html
I just found this article, which purports to explain the exaggeration of the looting, as well as other exaggerations.
The entire article is worth reading.
The New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch. I trust the reliability of this source about as much as I trust Fox News, which is not at all. Their credibility is zero.
I ain’t reading the article. I have eyeballs. Do you december?
December, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was for the most part a monster, and that the majority of the Iraqi people are glad to be rid of him. And on the presumption that we keep our promises and enable them to have a free democratic government chosen by themselves, we’re liberators.
There remain large questions about whether our intervention, now and in the way we did, was the right move for America to make. As previously noted, I have reasons to feel that it was, though I had some strong questions going into it.
A person who expresses his negative views about acts committed or planned to be committed by his government, in a representative democracy, is not being unpatriotic but the reverse. No doubt there are a noisy few Americans who hate our government – but to tar the remainder of those who expressed their views with being equivalent to them is reprehensible. Either that, or every Republican in America should be locked up for having the temerity to object to the choices made by the Administrations of FDR, HST, JFK, LBJ, Carter, and Clinton. Either it works both ways, or it doesn’t work at all.
The fact remains, spokesmen for the museum came out with the 170,000 estimate – and may have exaggerated some. After all, the man who embezzled $1,998,634.82 was telling the honest truth when he denied having embezzled two million dollars!
There seems to be little question that looters did remove a fair number of historical artifacts from the museum, whatever their motives – and that a thorough inventory stored elsewhere may not have been made.
If someone burglarized your house, could you identify every artifact that might have been removed. How many bars of soap are stored in your bathroom? Exactly how many books do you own? Can you give a precise count and listing of the CDs in your collection? Where are those lists kept, if you have them – what if they’re stored in your home and the burglars burned them?
Objectivity in reportage is an unattainable ideal, simply because every word in the English language carries some sort of connotation – even using the scientific term for something carries the flavor of a choice not to use the commonplace term for it, for whatever reason – but I prefer my news to be as close to unbiased as possible. We’ve discussed at length the slants carried by staff of various news sources, “embedded” journalists, and so on – if you can’t see grounds for a legitimate balance between perspectives, I pity you. (And that was irony; I do believe you can.)
It must be wonderful to live in a world where you can choose the reality you want.
We saw the lootings on TV. We saw room after room after room of the museum totally looted and destroyed. And now we are supposed to believe it did not happen at all because some guy says so without further explanation. That is pure fanaticism: believeing what you want to believe rather than the evidence in front of you.
december might not like it but the fact is we saw the lootings and the estimation that it was a disaster has been repeated by scholars around the world. Some dimwit saying it was “not so bad” will only convince those who are blinded by their fanaticism.
Thank you for writing that, Poly.
I’d only wish more people on the pro-war side would be open-minded enough to recognize the above without going into spastic knee-jerks, calling anyone who dares question the wisdom of the actions taken, anything and everything from “anti-American” to “Saddam lover.”
It appears that the arrogance and hubris displayed by the current administration has seeped down to most of their backers. Criticism is not just unwelcomed, but seen as a major affront. It is that same attitude that has managed to alienate the United States from the world community to a level that was simply unthinkable only a short 18 months ago – and unprecedent in my, arguably, ample lifetime. Not a good sign, no matter how much people like december, wish to ignore that fact.
In truth, most definitive answers to the actions taken in both, Iraq and Afghanistan (the forgotten invasion), lie in the future. But by the same token, if past and present record is anything to go by…
Liberals “difinitive answers” always lie in the future. How else can you people preach your scaretactics and try to cast aspersions on those that disagree with you with your end-of-the-world rhetoric.
Remember when the “difinitive answers” about the attrocities of the war lied in the fututre. The answers of hundreds of thousands of civilians dead. The answers of years of fighting and the us being assailed with terorism upon terrorism?
Yeah, how dare liberals think about the future. What a stupid thing to do. It’s not like our actions of have consequences.
Yup, hundreds of thousands aren’t dead. Thousands are. Phew. I’m sure no one will be mad at the United States for that.
The war ended a few weeks ago (and few suggested this war would go on for years). There hasn’t been time for years and years of ANYTHING. Meanwhile, there are anti-US rallies on a very regular basis in Iraq. At some of the most recent ones, demonstrators have been shot. Another thing sure to increase Iraqi goodwill.